Skip to content
Unitive Knowledge Society
Search

Accents are optional; quotes find an exact phrase.

Bhāvanā

Cultivation or development: the Buddhist word for meditation as a training of the mind.

Also: Bhavana, meditation

Early Buddhism and the Theravāda

Bhāvanā means bringing into being, cultivating. It is the usual Buddhist term for meditation, in its two forms of calm and insight, and more widely for the development of wholesome qualities such as loving-kindness. It stresses that the mind can be trained, as a field is cultivated.